A year after the death of Chief Stella Obasanjo, her friends, relations, admirers and associates both in politics and business, top government functionaries and members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), will today converge on Aso Villa to remember the glamorous late first lady, who brought a lot of glamour and panache to bear on the office.
However, they are not assembling to celebrate another anniversary of her passing away, rather they would be doing so to launch Stella Obasanjo’s Song In Memorial (SOSIM) project album.
The event, which is billed for the Banquet Hall of Aso Villa, would be chaired by Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu. Minister of Information and National Orientation, Frank Nweke Jr., would be chief host, while Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), will play host, and President Olusegun Obasanjo the special guest of honour.
The album project, according to Klet Saint Akor, CEO of Da Soul II Entertainment, initiator of SOSIM, was inspired by the late Stella Obasanjo’s passion for the development of the African child.
"The project comprises 55 artistes of different genres performing 45 songs to be released in four volumes," Akor told Daily Independent. "The aim is to raise funds for child base charities across Africa through concerts, endorsements and album sales," Akor said.
This project will not only immortalise the passion this great African Amazon, Stella Obasanjo, had for the African child, but also serve to provide sustainable platform for continuous support of the children’s welfare services and initiative across the continent through more concerts, project albums and endorsement.
Like the Henry Ford Foundation, the Bill Gate Foundation and other personality-based initiatives, the SOSIM project, the organisers say, will build a culture of homegrown charity around the icon and person of the late first lady.
"As we live with the harsh reality of her absence, let us be reminded of the fate of the children she left behind under the Child Care Trust. For, if we are not mindful, as we adjust to life and move on, as it is with us, we may soon forget the weak and disadvantaged children who informed her passion and pet project. We do not need to look far. Around us are the unfortunate children who once exuded so much life and prospect, but turned destitute overnight simply because they lost their parents or benefactors," Akor said.
According to him, the passion for the SOSIM project is, among others, fuelled by the need to sustain the late Stella Obasanjo's Child Care Trust initiative, in absentia, for a broad based integration of the needs of the African child for whom the late first lady laboured. A major part of the fund to be raised by this project and others in the future would be domiciled with the Stella Obasanjo Song Memorial Foundation, a 'project institution' for grant funding of child-based initiatives, researches, campaign and advocacy programmes, orphanages and child-related institutions, programmes and projects capable of impacting and lifting the status of the African child.
It is under this provision that Link-a-Child, a nationwide child welfare network, is considered for funding.
The management of Da Soul II Entertainment, Akor said, has mobilised the best of Nigeria’s upcoming and celebrated artistes for the all-time epoch and groundbreaking 45-track album.
The launch/grand performance has received the blessings of Mr. Olumuyiwa Obasanjo, the only son of the late Chief Stella Obasanjo, and chairman of Child Care Trust.
As a follow up to the launch, plans have been completed for extensive national and international tours and concert performance.
This would provide opportunity for all and sundry who share the vision of the African child, within and beyond the shores of this country, to make their contributions to this worthy course.
"The late Chief Stella Obasanjo had played her part, let us take it from where she stopped, because the need is still here with us," Akor said.
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